Sub Rosa

Rough draft: Speech = 60%; Sense of Place A Passage to India (3,000 word - almost mini dissertation) = 63% !!! At rough draft!!! Woooo Hoooo!! Downside - yeah, I can't WAIT to turn those suckers around o_O. In anycase, the major headache is out of the way, three left - then it's pedal to the metal and do the resubmission.

Another good day - I must count my blessings and hope they all stick together somehow :-D

Really not well again, this bug brings you down, lets you recover then comes back around for another try. I have broken through the 3,000 pain barrier (absolute maximum should be 3,300) and I am about 80% done i.e. need to rewrite/ look for academic essays to quote from. Drinking herb tea, because anything with milk in it tastes like cheese and makes me cough more.  I need to have an extension on a couple of things, so I will be getting a sick note on Tuesday if possible.  The weather outside has turned cold and rainy and actually all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep.

18:37
3,085 - will expand on some, pare back on others.  Can't get on Lit Online as it won't let me in and The English Review has a Shibboleth error (internal internet forum problem).  So much for sprinkles, they will have to be added at a later date.

I do feel better than at least 2/3rds of the work is done but I have a long trek ahead.  I am not resentful that I have to sit through the Easter holiday to do this - Hubby has to work and both Prodigal 1 & 2 are working in the holiday trade, this year at the same place.  It is just me and Classic FM for company, which is fine.  However, i do feel so very lethargic - I've been told to take the weekend off, but how can I with work stacked up? I would be less relaxed if I was vegetating on the settee with the assignment mountain growing in the office.

13:26
There is some cohesion at long last - as I am beginning to yank my pre-typed phrases to support my arguments, out of my Word Dump that exisists at the end of all my work (literally, I type something mid thought stream or something I have read and dump it at the end of the text, with view to use later on).

21:24
2,463 - I am done for now.  Had to take a break to organise delivery of Roux's bookshelf.  She gave me her Liquorice Allsorts tea caddy, which was nice.  I'll have to renew my passport now she's moving to Tenerife - a lovely excuse to visit.

Well, I'm back to the coalface again - though I am still coughing like an 80-a-day lag and bunged up to the hilt.  Thankfully managed to resuscitate the essay, all 1,320 words of it.  Need to be more driven than I am at the moment.  It is bothering me that there are still three other essays to write between now and May, then the grand turn around of essays between May 1st and June 2nd.  I am seriously worried about this.  Just trying to think of it as Level 4: Access Course with bells on top :-/

15:03
Well....you know when you are not so well, yet you have typed more than you usually do? That somehow, it all makes sense and you can pat yourself on the back for being equally prolific and proficient.  I have just looked at last Friday's writing.  All I can say is - Good Lord o_O.  I have had a few ' say what?? ' moments - in some areas, I understand the gist, but absolutely NONE of the syntax and visa-versa.  What was I on about - or ON even? I remember now - Corvonia and Lemsip. I have 1,458 words, but I really need to edit before I go on.

20:25
Have taken a break, mostly to get some echinacea and lip salve from the market. Lips are cracked and I feel like I have been punched in the face. 1,658 words.  Not sure how I am going to pull this round, to be honest.  I have to signpost it back to the original title and pepper observations as Forster's own, plus read around the subject a bit more.

22: 46
I have managed 2,046, I think I have to change the way I plan essays.  I read the book with the idea that I would be using key phrases, so I had the presence of mind to log them - but I think I could have done with typing them out first of all, so the essay would fit better.  I had a good plan which has worked, but it needs an awful amount of meshing to make any sense.

It is difficult to talk of cultural differences, unless you get inside the mind of a different race and how can you walk in a mile in the shoes of that person?  Plus also sometimes I totally get why the subtext gets confused on both sides and Forster goes to great pains to show it via his text, but there is something more tangible I am trying to grasp here.  A feeling that mere words cannot express.  I can see the tailcoats of it, but words do not come to mind.  It is a sensory thing of which my emotional body can understand, but of which my intellect has problems. It is paradoxically the simplicity and the complexities of it and my word-finding faculties have gone to the wall. 

Right now, I am pouring over the features of Forster's India and how the people live.  I have to be so careful what I write here, because I start to feel inspired whilst writing the log - then worry about using it in the essay (everything I write in the essay is scanned and if my LJ turns up, I have to explain myself - then have the embarrassment of citing myself.  Right now, I can do without that).  550 words so far - go me.

16:23
Not overly pleased, as I have had continual interruptions and veer from plodding with a vague plan, to looking at the screen with a giant blankness.  Tomorrow will be broken up a bit too - i am just concerned this this is starting to slip a bit and I really need to get back on track. For some reason, I came across an Aphex Twin vid and now I am thoroughly disturbed - good old Youtube, now scarred for life LOL :-)

21:09
I was hoping to have this done by Sunday night, but I am way off schedule as I have things to do and promises to keep.  I have done 800 words so far and I am glad re the research I did and the notes I made, but I have to keep showing how sociology/psychology/philosophy are sandwich between the Topology/Climate and continual Culture clashes. Difficult - plus I will have to ask Hubby to take up the slack when it comes to work/family issues.  I am sick and tired of the phone ringing all day.

I have had a marathon reading/annotation session of A Passage to India and I have only a 100 pages left.  When I first read it, I found it rather heavy going, but in taking my time the second time around all I could think was ::: what an exquisite writer E.M. Forster was!!  The descriptions of the towns, the characters and the all invading heat, cupped by skies of sultry sunsets and moonlit mystery. I cannot endorse this book enough and it does show how the cultures struggled so much.

Many people feel that the west becoming involved with the east was a good idea as it brought a different culture and united people with a single language.  Both Indians and English profited they would argue - until at least 50 years ago; now the whole world has a different perspective.  The west has mixed feelings about it now, some will even argue the toss over how it was a good thing, maybe as a defense of their looting ancestors.  We freed the crap out of you etc.  Personally, before last year my social history was at best sketchy.  But after studying Achebe's Things Fall Apart (insider), my own post colonial studies power point and Forster's A Passage to India (outsider), it is not to feel not only empathy to indigenous populations, but to truly feeling scathing about the colonials, who stole their land. Righteous for me, only - but more justified for them as they had to endure it.

I know ::: too simplified, when I am a bit more au fait with my literature theories, I may reconsider.  Right now, I will have to read the court scene on Saturday - it's back to college tomorrow :-)